Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Polish officials said Monday that four Russian soldiers have been detained on suspicion of stealing credit cards from the crash site of the Polish presidential plane in Smolensk and have details about how the perpetrators repeatedly tried to withdraw cash from Smolensk bank machines. “I can confirm that we have been informed that four soldiers from the units that secured the crash area were detained,” said a spokeswoman for Polish Internal Security Agency, Reuters reported. Polish government spokesman Pawel Gras, who first spoke about the missing credit cards Sunday, confirmed Monday that the suspects were four soldiers and said he had been mistaken in initially identifying them as three OMON riot police officers. He spoke at a news conference in Warsaw. In Moscow, Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said he was “not ready to comment” because the information “should be verified,” Bloomberg reported. A credit card belonging to Andrzej Przewoznik, a 46-year-old historian, was used for three days after he died in the crash on April 10, Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Warsaw prosecutors, told The Associated Press. There were 11 withdrawals from his credit card, and the first occurred just hours after the crash, Lewandowska said, adding that an ATM in Smolensk was used to obtain the equivalent of 6,000 Polish zlotys ($1,728) from the card. Another card belonging to Przewoznik also went missing, and someone tried to withdraw cash from it six times but failed, Lewandowska said. The Polish Embassy in Moscow declined to comment Monday.Responding to initial reports implicating the police in wrongdoing, the Interior Ministry issued a statement calling the Polish claims “sacrilegious” and “cynical” and noting that four Smolensk policemen involved in the crash investigation and cleanup were awarded medals by acting Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on May 8. Smolensk police said they had not been notified by Polish officials about any credit card thefts. Przewoznik, head of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, died in the crash that also killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 94 other people as their plane tried to land in foggy weather. Credit cards belonging to Aleksandra Natalli-Swiat, deputy head of the Law and Justice political party, also went missing in the crash, but no transactions have been reported on them.